i am 5"3 and 173 lbs.. i go to zumba 4-5 times a week eat mostly salads and drink water cut out soda have coffee still but only in the morning started october going to zumba classes each lasts an hour and i am drenched in sweat by the time i am through...but i have not seen inches or lbs drop...i checked thyroid everything normal they said....so why am i not losing... forgot to add i am highly senstitive to mold and have breathing problems could mold in my system be wrecking my weight loss plan

you may be restricting your calories too much and your body is going into starvation mode. A month into my journey I got a little crazy with veggies and ended up not getting enough calories. I had to increase my calories to 1500-1600. I was 5'3" at 181 lbs when I started. I keep my calories at 600-700 total before dinner. Then I have what I want without being ridiculous at dinner. . . Lots of protein for my breakfast and low amount of bread and pasta usually but I still have these things a few times a week. I do not eat processed foods that much, and when I do it's organic and/or less than five ingredients and usually homemade. Today it's been 6 months exactly and I've lost 30.4 lbs,

Also, if you've just started exercising your body may be holding water to repair injured cells. If you're even a little sore this is prob what's happening.

Would you mind sharing a typical daily menu?

Kat I post my menu almost every day in this thread http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/othe...hread-3-a.html. You can search forum for the previous thread (thread 2) where I did the same thing.

Hope it's helpful!

Hi PrairieQueen!

I just read parts of the thread you referred to and found these two recent menus that you had posted:

Break - McD's sausage burrito w/hot sauce, ice tea w/stevia
Snack - skinny popcorn
Lunch - leftover cheese potato/ham bake
Snack - skinny caramel latte
Dinner -spaghetti w/bolognese sauce

Break - cheesy potato/ham bake
Lunch - Penn Station pizza sub & fries
Dinner - pickled Korean radishes (daikon) and dill pickles
Snack - light beers

Break - cheesy potato bake, Coke Life
Lunch - black bean soup w/feta
Snack - mini mincemeat pie
Dinner - goose confit and fig salad, prime rib w/Yorkshire pudding and mashed potatoes, plum pudding w/rum sauce,two light beers

I don't know but to me it looks like you're eating too many calories. Have you tried counting them? I mean fries, beers (even though they are light) and pudding - They don't really sound like diet food to me. I would cut them all and add a lot more vegetables. And track the calories.

I think you may have me confused with the OP.

I keep my calories under 700 for breakfast and lunch together, so I can eat what I want at dinner. I eat loads of veg from my garden and I've lost 30 lbs in six months.... I've went from a size 14 to just now getting into size 8s. I don't think I need to count calories

Lean protein is your friend! Does not need to be organic.
How are you cooking, or ordering the fish?
Legumes are fine. Where do the baked beans come from? Homemade or canned? Sugar could be an issue here.
Non potato veg is fine. But how are you eating them? And taters are not the enemy, it's how we cook them and what we dress them with.

Nuts and seeds are ok, but a handful, is not measuring! You need to get a scale and weigh a handful! Could be you are over or under estimating the portion.

I LOVE, LOVE, peanut butter, however, it is way to easy, to go wrong, with portions here. Again, you need the tools and actually measure!

Yogurt. When doing yogurt, fat and sugar, on the nutrition label, need to be, single digits, and protein a double digit. Many so called healthy yogurts, are not.

Cottage cheese, low fat, is ok, other dairy? Hmm, what do you mean by that? Cheese, which I love, we need to be very careful with our choices here.

I LOVE, LOVE, cheese. However, after a long time of making choices, it either needs to serve me as a healthy calcium choice, or REALLY, be a TASTY, part of the dish. I have fallen in love with a bit of low fat feta cheese, in a salad. It brings an acidic bite, that pairs well with fruit.

Olives are ok, in moderation.

Condiments, as you listed, not that bad.

Full fat dressing. If you like ranch, low fat buttermilk, 0 fat greek yogurt, and ranch seasoning, make your own. Way healthier and still tastes great!

Why would you eat a breaded fast food? Google the recipe, for breaded chicken nuggets. It will scare your pants off. The chicken, gets, slopped, sliced, diced, turned into a slurry, (aka, sloppy soup concoction), then they turn it back into something that looks like chicken, but not really, and then they bread it, with who know what, but last time I looked, Mcdonalds Chicken Mcnuggets, recipe included, something along the lines of glutal alchohol, which is flammable!

Then, you don't eat bread, cereal, corn, yada, yada, blah, blah, whatever!

First and foremost you NEED TO TRACK WHAT YOU ARE EATING! For a lot of reasons. Weight loss, not being the first priority. Tracking, helps you figure out how what foods affect your body.

Personally, I am medically diagnosed, allergic to chocolate. Gives me a God awful belly ache. I choose to not eat that.

Through tracking, I have figured out how much pasta and bread I can eat without, being bloated. I can have some, but don't get crazy.

Dairy, not an issue for me.

Tracking is very important!

If you have a car, do you not keep track of when you need to get it serviced? Do you keep track of your bank account? Track paying bills? Do you track when to change your furnace filter? Your dental check ups, eye exams, pet care? And so on and so forth. So, WHY DO YOU NOT TRACK your NUTRITION, and FITNESS?

You can replace a lot of "things" but, pretty tough to replace your body!

Kat - The most likely reason for not losing weight is that you don't have a calorie deficit. That is, you are eating more calories than you are burning. Even eating salads, it is possible to eat more than you think. I would suggest counting calories for awhile to see how much you are eating. Do you have an activity monitor, like a Fitbit? That might give you an idea of how many calories you are burning.

What is the rest of your day like outside of exercise. For example, I don't burn a lot of calories even though I do exercise. I live in a 1 story house, work from home, sit at a desk to do my work, and most of my hobbies are sedentary. Even though I do exercise I don't burn a lot of calories.

While eating low calories can slow the metabolism and my slow weight loss over time it is usually not the reason for a total failure to lose.

Here is the thing,
no matter what path you choose, to achieve a balanced and healthy lifestyle, you have to count/track/journal in some way.

Much like keeping track of your check book, or insulin, or the "diet" of your kids or you dog, or keeping track or whatever you keep track of.

It is a choice.